Thursday 26 June 2008

Cretan Stitch and June Arch Swap

I haven't been doing a lot of stitch lately but continue to be involved with the groups monthly arch swaps and a little fun postcard swap.




June's arch was for my partner Annette and because she left it up to me re: colour and theme I was stumped trying to come up with something different (thinking everyone will be bored to death with the twin needling stuff!) so instead I've taken some painted up crumpled paper (recycled of course), overlaid this with sheer fabrics and free machined with a glitzy thread. The mish - mash design was something from an earlier pen and ink doodling exercise for textile challenges, great fun but i didn't do anything with it then.

It was easy to print it directly to a fine fabric via the printer then stitch following the lines on the back (see Maggie Grey's new book Image to Stitch for in depth instructions- a definite must have).

The whole thing was then blasted with the heat gun before being finished with a little surface embellishment of hand stitches and a few beads here and there.

Since I'd made a fairly decent sized 'sheet of fabric' felt i couldn't waste a scrap of it so made some post cards and a couple of atc's. One of the postcards went to my lovely graphic designer daughter, she'll love the fact it was sent through the post nude. She's watched me making oodles of these over the years but I'm yet to actually send one to her - what a rotten mum.



The second challenge was a hand stitch lottery, the stitch given to me was Cretan and i must admit to having to root through some books as it's so long since I'd tackled this one - shame on me!

There's quite a few variations with this stitch so once i got into the swing i was hooked, so much so i went back to my arch pieces and included the stitch there too. So relaxing was it that I wish now that i had joined in with the 'take a stitch Tuesday' that was so popular last year on a site which i should know but escapes me now! Anyway it has me thinking that i might do my own alphabet of stitches , take it on holiday perhaps. i-pod and hand stitching the perfect duo.


This was the finished little atc. Cretan stitch ( Jan style) on open weave hessian and as I had some lovely dried seed pods which were crying out to be recycled, i thought couching them down would just continue the natural theme. Hope you like it Carol?












3 comments:

Carol said...

Oh Jan, these are just lovely. The surfaces are fab. I am sure Kerry will love hers. Love the colours too.

Clippy Mat said...

Jan: I am just so impressed at your artwork and creativity. I won't pretend that I understand a lot of your concepts and themes because as I've already said, I'm the least artistic person I know, but I can appreciate their work and beauty. Well done. I feel quite proud of you having known you since way back when. Love and hugs, Pat x

Guzzisue said...

Hi, I see you've joined stitchin fingers, their TAST group have just done Cretan stitch samples, I dp like the hessiam stitched sample- very autumn grassey :-)